The U.S. military handed over Iraq's Anbar province to Iraqi security forces on Monday, less than two years after it almost lost the western region to a Sunni Arab insurgency.
I was never that panicky to think we were about to lose Anbar. But I thought it would likely be the last province to be pacified.
Even as I could see that Sunni Arabs would effectively surrender in central Iraq, I figured that Anbar would be the last to be ground down as Iraqi forces finally expanded enough to flood the province and take over from our forces who held the line. Since Anbar was never more than nominally controlled even by Saddam, I thought absorbing Anbar would be the last front.
But Anbar flipped in fall 2006 under the twin factors of American forces that would not be beaten or compelled to retreat and al Qaeda thugs who terrorized Sunni Arabs and made the jihadis unwelcome.
And with Anbar no longer friendly to al Qaeda in Iraq, when the surge offensive began in earnest in summer 2007, the jihadis in central Iraq found their supply line to Syria cut and found that they could not retreat to friendly territory to the west, where Anbar Arabs and American forces held the line.
Instead the jihadis took flight to the north where they were beaten in Mosul in the first half of 2008. Now Diyala province is the last major area where al Qaeda in Iraq operates in any strength. And with al Qaeda moving resources to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the fleeing jihadis in Diyala are dead men walking.
I'm more than happy to have been wrong on my view of this province's potential.
